What the RAND Corporation thinks are : "Eleven Emerging Challenges"

[laststeamtrain]

Issues over the Horizon
Eleven Emerging Challenges

To celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the RAND Corporation and to uphold its tradition of taking on the big issues of tomorrow, a call went out to all RAND staff around the world, inviting them to propose essays on “important policy issues not currently receiving the attention they deserve in the public debate” — issues, in other words, that might be on the back burner today but will likely become front-burner issues within the next five years.

More than 100 issues were raised. The final product: the 11 essays published here. These were selected either because they highlight major public policy problems that have eluded the mainstream media radar or because they point toward major public policy solutions that have been likewise overlooked — or both.

Despite the wide range of topics, from corporate malfeasance to antimicrobial resistance, common themes emerge. The biggest one is the shaky financial footing that threatens to undermine several pillars of the public interest: Medicare, Social Security, roads, bridges, water systems, power grids, elections, military operations, diplomatic endeavors, and public health. At the same time, there are national and global reasons for hope. There is even a concluding vision of a new and better form of statecraft.

Readers might be tempted to connect the issues outlined here with those being debated on the U.S. presidential campaign trail, but that is not the intent. Our goal is to raise public awareness of several salient issues that will likely grow in prominence regardless of the election outcome.

* The Aging Couple
* Corporate America’s Next Big Scandal
* Innovative Infrastructure
* The Day After: When Electronic Voting Machines Fail
* Reality Check for Defense Spending
* A New Anti-American Coalition



* The Future of Diplomacy: Real Time or Real Estate?
* Corporate Counterinsurgency
* Beating the Germ Insurgency
* A Second Reproductive Revolution
* From Nation-State to Nexus-State

http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/summer2008/horizon.html
*

I wish I could write in the 'big man movie voice' when I write ELEVEN EMERGING CHALLENGES.

Anyway I encourage you to hear it that way.

[Union Thug]

1. Here's another one for them: a growing army of angry, underpaid workers

who don't care what the RAND corporation thinks.

[laststeamtrain]

2. Laying siege to gated communities across the nation. Sounds good to me. n/t

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. Very thought provoking.

Not what you would expect from RAND, usually.

[laststeamtrain]

4. It's interesting for sure.

They never want to go out of business. They will always want to supply what the customer wants.

The way I read it is they think 'we' have some repairing to do after the Reagan-Bush-false interregnum-Bush debacle.

[Tutonic]

6. Yeah essentially since they were a part of the big Cabal.

[SMC Beck]

5. Innovative Infrastructure

I would like to see more information on compressed air cars.
Companies like ZPM (Zero Pollution Motors) and MDI are
preparing to release "Air Cars" in 2009 for $17,000
to $18,000. The cars come with air compressors to reload the
air tanks and can go 200 miles. Why is there no big media
coverage of this?

A thought:How about building a WPA-type project that
constructs a shipping canal along our southern border? It
would avoid the Panama problems, connect Atlantic to Pacific,
give a route for sharing storm/flood waters from the south
east to the south west US, and provide high security to our
Mexico border.